THE Criticised by its Own Adviser

Simon Marginson has been a critic of the QS university rankings for some time. Now, he has finally added the Times Higher Education rankings to the list.

According to the Australian:

"What we should collectively do, in my view, is start to critique and discredit the bad social science at the base of multi-indicator rankings," he said. "We are universities; it is not hard for us to say what is good science and what is bad. We need to push at bad ranking methods or at least weaken their legitimacy." He told the Canberra meeting that threats by QS to sue him, and the predilection of governments to use rankings as a proxy for quality, made speaking out even more important. He said the results of questionable rankings "slide in all directions" from year to year because they mix survey and objective data, and adjust arbitrary weightings. "The link back to the real world is over-determined by indicator selection, weightings, poor survey returns and ignorant respondents, scaling decisions and surface fluctuation that is driven by small changes between almost equally ranked universities," he said. "The rankers shape the table, not the real state of the sector - or not enough. There is scope for manipulation in conversations between the universities and the rankers." Professor Marginson, who has been a vocal opponent of survey-based rankings for years, sits on the advisory board of the THE. While that ranking was superior to QS, it was still fatally flawed once outside the top 50 universities, he said.